Holy Garage Sale Batman...

My mother-in-law recently went to a garage sale and bought me these cool little coffee plaques...to go with my "coffee themed" kitchen. If you can call 1 set of curtains, dish towel and clock a "theme"! I was very excited until I got them home and held them up to my walls....clash-o-rama! They looked terrible together. So within seconds I had a new idea...I decided to hang them on the cabinet doors above my stove. What do you think?

Garage sales are amazing things in my opinion...where else can you buy someones cast off "junk" and use it for something good! (Good= saving me money!)

I read a story recently about a red plaid couch. (Sounds like a nice couch!) This couch had lived with a family for 20 years, had been loved by everyone and was a happy couch. One day the family had a garage sale and decided to give away the couch to a good family, since they no longer needed it. They put a sign on it saying "Free to a Good Home" and had many people stop to look at the couch. But no one wanted it. After unsucessfully trying to convince an older gentelman that there was not much wrong with the free couch they decided to replace the "free" sign with a sign that read "$10- non negotiable!" Within 20 minutes two families had expressed interest and the couch was awarded to the family who could transport it immediately!

The following was taken from the end of the story.

By Matt Litton

"We are conditioned that we must pay for anything of value. It is true that the problem many people have with our faith, the problem many church people have with God, is that His grace is freely extended. We are consumers; we want to pay for it; we are suspicious, skeptical and distrustful of anything too good that is free. Look around and you will find most of the people you know are out there working overtime to earn love, to warrant acceptance, to deserve their place in eternity. The scandalous quintessence of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it’s free, that the price for our salvation has already been paid. This has been a huge revelation in my spiritual journey as I have begun to examine how the depth with which I constantly want to earn my salvation and forgiveness has affected my spiritual growth. For so many of us, faith is an act of working to fill our spiritual bank account with good deeds or positive karma. We live life with the attitude of every good consumer–we believe we get what we pay for, we get what we deserve–yet nothing could be further from the truth. God is a lot like that old red couch, calling us to sit, rest, experience an eternal quality of life, community, togetherness and peace. Like that couch for many of us (including me) the hardest thing to accept is God’s Grace comes free–we only need to claim it."

I've heard garage sales are good for buying cars too..... ;)